Business

How do brands appeal to today’s consumers? Is bricks-and-mortar retail going to come back after the pandemic? How have retailers responded to recent discussions around racial tensions and inequality?

As we approach the midpoint of 2021, advertising growth for the year is far exceeding previous expectations, leading to a revision of our forecasts for this year and beyond. Excluding political spending, we now expect a 22% growth in media ad revenue during 2021, a marked improvement from our prior forecast.

Consumer habits shifted dramatically in March 2020 in response to stay-at-home orders and the shuttering of offices across the nation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. There were reports of people traveling less, workers gaining unprecedented freedom to work from anywhere and consumers ordering more products online.  But did these lifestyle changes affect industries in the same way?

This multiyear study organized by the Alliance for Board Diversity (ABD), in collaboration with Deloitte for the 2016, 2018, and 2020 censuses, highlights the progress to date that has or has not been made in the equitable representation of women and minorities on corporate boards.

What’s hot in retail can sometimes be difficult to predict because innovations and adoptions are moving so quickly. The pandemic taught us that new behaviors are always popping up, but we’re still figuring out which ones are here to stay.

Last year, the average US adult spent more time per day with most media formats and devices, including TV. Although adults will spend nearly as much time with media this year, their TV viewing time will drop below pre-pandemic levels.

A dizzying array of changes in consumer behavior will touch nearly every industry as the reopening period progresses, vaccination rates rise, more schools and businesses open, and people start to emerge from their homes and re-enter the larger world. Changes to work and school patterns, and the reemergence of dining out and other experiential spending, will affect how consumers reprioritize their spending in the coming months and beyond.

Advertising, PR, creative, digital, and full-service agencies have played a crucial role in the marketer’s toolkit for decades. But the landscape is changing. More than ever, overlap exists between agencies and consultancies, in-house and external agencies, and the roles of humans and automation. ANA Marketing Futures gathered perspectives from marketers and subject matter experts to understand how marketers view the future of agency and how its trajectory impacts marketing decision making.

The current industry conversation around investment inequalities in the media and creative supply chain has been extensive, and rightly so.  For example, there has been tremendous interest in supporting Black-owned businesses and Asian-owned businesses have also garnered interest and support.  By Bill Duggan /  Group EVP, ANA

On today’s episode, we discuss what the world will look like in 2030. Who will be the digital ad giants, how much shopping will we do online, will bank branches disappear, and more. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer vice president of forecasting Monica Peart, senior director of forecasting Shelleen Shum, and directors of forecasting at Insider Intelligence Cindy Liu and Oscar Orozco.

Post-pandemic business travel is slowly on the upswing among U.S. marketers, and the key reason appears to be the growing number of vaccinations against the coronavirus, according to a new ANA survey.

It seems like every week I speak with executives who tell me they’re burned out or exhausted. And why wouldn’t they be? Everyone has been on a full out sprint for the past year as we’ve run the biggest business social experiment in history. And now, after more than a year of 10 to 12 Zoom meetings a day (that’s the average I’m hearing), COVID vaccinations and the freedom they bring have unleashed a wave of pent-up demand to pack even more into our days.

People have challenged each other’s views for much of human history. But the internet – particularly social media – has changed how, when and where these kinds of interactions occur. The number of people who can go online and call out others for their behavior or words is immense, and it’s never been easier to summon groups to join the public fray.

New normal work models are here to stay

As organizations around the world make plans for their people to return to the workplace, the latest research report from Accenture finds that 83% of people say a hybrid work model is optimal ─ where individuals have the ability to work remotely between 25% and 75% of the time

A substantial majority (69 percent) of ANA members have strategic plans in place to hire suppliers with diverse backgrounds for marketing and advertising services, according to a new ANA study.

MiQ, a programmatic media partner, announced the launch of their U.S. Hispanic and multicultural practices that will help advertisers best reach and engage U.S. multicultural audiences through more sophisticated, diverse data sets.

A supplier diversity program is a proactive business program which encourages the use of women-owned, ethnic/minority-owned, veteran-owned, LGBTQ-owned, disability-owned, and small businesses as suppliers.

Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis, Transformative Mega Trends in the United States through 2030, examines the complex intersections of social, education, work, political, economic, and urbanization trends set to converge in the next decade.

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven rapid adoption of digital channels across countries and industries, but digital’s growth has plateaued in the past six months and may begin to slip back once the pandemic eases—even as total digital adoption stays well above prepandemic levels.